Stop comparing the Affordable Care Act to sexual assault.

Bill O'Reilly compared Obamacare to a vicious motorcycle gang coming after your daughter. The brothers Koch sponsored an anti-Obamacare ad that depicts an over-sized Uncle Sam with a speculum in hand, ready to do untold things to the college girl on the table. GOP governors are signing transvaginal ultrasound bills into law, because after all..freedom. They're also trying to circumvent a woman's constitutional right to have an abortion if she chooses. 

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?????

As a survivor of sexual assault, I take issue with these derelicts who equate anything that isn't sexual assault with anything that is. I'll be 56 in a few days. I live with what my father did every day of my life. It has controlled everything about me. In many ways it ruined my chance of ever having a normal life. But then, I don't know what normal looks like anyway. Now that he's dead, you'd think I could move on. But it doesn't work that way. These days, I take it a day at a time, sometimes a minute at a time. Because life goes on and you have to deal with all of it.

We need to be so careful when we compare one thing to another. Pennsylvania's Governor just compared gay marriage to incest. Trust me when I say that it's not. This idiot needs to be thrown out of office. Would he like me to explain the difference? Would he like details? Because if an incest survivor knows the difference between that and two gay people getting married and the Governor of Pennsylvania doesn't, then he shouldn't be allowed to govern anyone.

Go visit that Sandusky guy in jail. That's what a predator looks like. It's not the Affordable Care Act. The only predators there are the ones who are lying about it. You have to ask yourself, why? Why would anyone want people to suffer without health insurance? What's in it for them? Is it money? Is it power and control? Honestly, I don't care what it is. I just want it to stop. Life is tough enough. When lawmakers in Congress lie about our new health care law, all they do is hurt the very people who need it the most. This should be a criminal act. They should be arrested, prosecuted, and then thrown in prison. You don't lie to the American people about anything, but certainly not about a law that can actually enhance and protect their lives.

And for the love of all that is holy, stop stressing out survivors with this crap. We have enough to deal with. And there's a whole bunch of us out here. And guess what else.. We're consumers and voters. We can stop buying all kinds of things, stop watching all kinds of channels, begin voting for better legislators.

Yes. We. Can.

Veterans: Republicans are not your friends..

Wouldn't you know that Bachmann and company would take advantage of veterans trying to visit a WWII memorial yesterday. How craven are these people? Well, after shutting down the government, these idiots helped these folks break in to the monument, blaming the President for its closure. They're what I like to call, wrong.

I've been married to a disabled veteran for 34 years. In the early years, the VA couldn't seem to figure out that his wife and children (me and our boys) qualified for health care benefits. It eventually got straightened out, but our first child was paid for with insurance from a job, and our second child was paid for monthly because we had no insurance. We sold our truck to pay the last $400 we owed. Both were c-sections so this was expensive. It's so much easier these days to get somewhere with them, but we're in the system now. For new veterans and their families, this government shutdown only makes new claims take longer and in view of the existing backlog, to affect these folks this way is criminal. To blame the President is ridiculous.

When the Bush administration lied the country into war with Iraq, Rummy said, you go to war with the military you have, not the military you want. It would have been nice to go to war with the administration we elected too..you know the Gore administration. But then I wonder if Al Gore would have ever taken us into war with Iraq. Something tells me had he actually be allowed to serve as President, we'd be in a much different place now. Instead, George Bush sent our troops into harms way without body armor. I even remember reading that parents were being asked to send stuff to their family members serving that the government should have been providing. I had no problem going into Afghanistan, although I think it should have been a Special Forces deal. We never needed to engage in either place the way that we did. Remember who did this. Remember who sent your children to die without protection. 

Remember that it's the Tea Party Republicans along with their actual Republican counterparts who have advanced the war on women, children, seniors, poor people, you name it. Don't cheer when they use you to put the blame for their own shenanigans on the President. Because that's what they're doing..using veterans to promote their lie. Don't allow yourselves to be manipulated by these people. They couldn't care less about you. You were a means to an end for them. They don't understand the sacrifice you made for all of us. If they did, they would have never let this shutdown happen. Even for no other reason, couldn't they have thought about all the new veterans trying to get their disability claims processed? What about all the vets and active military personnel on food stamps? What about all the vets who are homeless? If we had never gone into Iraq, we wouldn't have this backlog, and oh my goodness..maybe family members would be alive and intact instead of what people are coping with now.

And what does the Tea Party do? They say thank you to veterans and active duty military personnel by shutting down the government just so that we don't have the Affordable Care Act. They hold us hostage. They hold you hostage. Of course the ACA went into effect yesterday anyway. All of this is for nothing. But its effect will be long lasting.

When you go to war, you never do this lightly. These wars may make a bunch of Bush's cronies lots of money, but it's destroyed so many lives. And when a small faction of people can destroy the country further because they have no clue how to properly govern, instead punishing the country with their radical ideology, we all need to stand up against them. What we don't do is cheer them on when they act like idiots.

Understand who the enemy is because they are among us.

As the shutdown looms..

My husband is a disabled Vietnam veteran who receives benefits from the Veteran's Administration each month. This is what happens when something goes wrong while in service to our country. We promise to take care of our veterans. They take care of us and, in turn, we take care of them. 

Unless you're a Tea Party Republican. Those people don't care about anyone. It's almost as if they're living in an alternate universe that's bleeding into ours. They don't make any sense and clearly do not understand what governing is. These mentally challenged individuals believe that they can control spending by not raising the debt limit. Trying to reason with them only falls on deaf ears. It's a fairly simple concept, really. I'm sure they all have credit cards. If they don't pay off the balance each month, they have to pay, say it with me now, interest or finance charges on the remaining balance. Or, say you finance a car you want to buy. You'll pay a certain amount of interest on that loan. Same thing happens when you buy a home. It all adds to the debt you owe. That's what the debt ceiling thing is. Voting each time to agree to simply pay the bills we've already agreed to incur is stupid and pointless. We owe the money. And although I know that old school Republicans exist, they're either too intimidated by these people, or they just don't care anymore to stop them. And now the Tea Party Republicans want to bail on our fiscal responsibilities. How can they hold office if they don't understand this? If this were a business, they'd be fired.

Somehow, they've even managed to incorporate the idea of freedom, into the equation. Unfortunately all they've really accomplished in my estimation is reducing freedom to an unrecognizable slogan or buzzword. And yet, they seem to be the biggest control freaks around. They want to force women to have vaginal ultrasounds before having an abortion, a constitutionally protected medical procedure. They know they can't win elections so much anymore because of how insane they are so they re-draw the districting lines or find other ways to suppress the vote. It's always in areas that typically vote for Democrats, so I guess they think if they stack the vote in their favor, they'll be back in control.

But let's look at what they do when Republicans (Tea Party or not) are in control. They lied us into two wars. They ended the Assault Weapons Ban. They crashed the economy. They enact laws typically on the state level that endanger workers' rights and women's rights. They seem to favor only protecting corporations instead of protecting people. They don't believe in climate change and they don't care if the earth is polluted out of existence. They pay homage to the 1% because that's who fills their election coffers. And then there's the racism. That filters into everything. It's part of why they voted to reduce the SNAP program by almost 40 billion. And don't even get me started on immigration reform or the whole, corporations are people my friend crap. This is compassionate conservatism at its finest.

And now they want to shut down the government unless we defund the Affordable Care Act. Never mind that the ACA is covering kids until they're 26. Never mind that pre-existing conditions will be covered. Never mind that it's going to save people money. Never mind that millions will have health insurance for maybe the first time ever. Never mind the facts, because as we all have seen, the GOP doesn't ever let facts get in the way of decision-making. Instead, they make stuff up out of whole cloth and expect the rest of us to buy it hook, line and sinker. Well, we're a whole lot smarter than that.

The country is in a mess. Crazy people always come out of the woodwork when these things happen. Many of them were elected to Congress. If we don't get them out of office, our country will never get back on track. The American people deserve better than these lunatics. We cannot stay home in 2014. We have to stand up and tell these morons that we deserve better than what they've given us. Vote.

That stupid Koch brothers' Obamacare ad..

So just when I think the Koch brothers couldn't go any lower, they do with this ridiculous ad that suggests that Obamacare is like being sexually assaulted by your government. I'd love a couple of minutes with these two pathetic excuses for human beings, let alone men, to tell them what I think of them. But there's no point. They're old now. If they can't understand why this was offensive and cruel, then they're idiots to begin with. Talking to them will solve nothing and will change nothing. 

But I'm going to say it anyway. No. Obamacare is not like being sexually assaulted by your government. I'm a sexual assault survivor and I should know. Trust me. Those of us who are, know the difference. To even suggest this is beyond over the top. They have gone too far here. Too far.

Did they think it was funny? Because it's not. It's creepy and sick. Like they are. To try to scare college aged women from buying insurance that can help them stay well is shameful. They should be embarrassed. But they're not. They're liars. Where are the parents? Are letters pouring in to the Koch brothers' offices? Are parents protesting outside their homes? How dare they intrude in our children's lives this way, presenting lies in a way that only confuses the issue.

I know what it's like to be sick while attending college. I spent a year and a half being so ill that I probably shouldn't have even been there. I had very little money to live on and I couldn't take proper care of myself. My parents didn't care what I was going through. I remember when I wanted to take a summer off and just work instead of doing both and my mother imploded. So they didn't help me at all, but what I did have was their health insurance. Without that, no telling what would have happened to me. It was court ordered due to my parents' divorce. Otherwise, I would have had nothing. 

I watched that ad in disbelief. When it became apparent that this was rape oriented, I became so nauseous that I nearly threw up. Here's the thing. No matter how we're assaulted, the experience stays with us forever. In my case, I'm an incest survivor. All I could see while watching that commercial was my perpetrator's face. If that's what I saw, can you imagine how other survivors reacted? Can you imagine the terror? I can. Because I felt it. And I haven't been calm since.

There is something seriously wrong with the people who made this ad. It never should have been allowed to be shown. What they're doing to innocent survivors is horrific. We've been through enough. We don't need to see stuff like this. I don't care who doesn't like the Affordable Care Act. I would have preferred single-payer. Can you imagine the ads they would have run if that had happened?

These scumbags used rape to sell a lie. And if people believe that lie, they will suffer for it. And why this isn't a criminal act is beyond me. So sorry you can't handle a black guy as our president. He's more intelligent than you; he's more savvy; he's more compassionate. Most importantly, he's a father. He actually understands what it means to BE a father. Get over it. He won twice. He's all the things you aren't and never will be. And if we're lucky, we'll keep moving in this inclusive direction and the bad guys will never be in power again. 

Because that's what all of this is. All this upheaval. The war on women, on cannabis, on children, on seniors, on the poor, add any name you want..it's all about the last vestiges of what is passing for conservatism these days. It's all about lying for the purposes of regaining control. They're evidently not satisfied with the drama they've created, they want more. Well, we're tired of it. A week from now, we'll find out if the idiots are going to cause the government to shut down. And if it does shut down, what then? Will we point our fingers at the appropriate people? Or will we enable it for the next time?

I wish Ron Paul would stop giving homeschooling a bad name..

When my boys were at the end of 7th and 4th grades respectively, we decided to homeschool. I didn't like the environment they were in. The older boy was in a junior high school that had become so violent that parents were staying at school in shifts to act as monitors. One little boy didn't show up for his last class. He was in my son's home room at the end of the day. The teacher finally went to look for him and found him in the commons area sitting on a bench, bloody and crying. It seems that six eighth grade boys surrounded him and beat the crap out of him. I refer to him as little, because he was smaller than many of the kids there.

In addition, the school had a policy of bathroom hall passes if a student needed to use the bathroom during class. You could get a pass ten times a year. The school was huge and if the kids had to go back to lockers to get more books or anything and had a class at the other end of the building, there wasn't enough time to do all of that and not be late to class. So, my son was told to use up a bathroom pass if late or pay a quarter to the teacher, or pay a fine or push a broom at lunch when his ten passes were gone. 

Now, I found all this irritating. Mostly I found it irritating because my son didn't tell me about any of this until he needed money to pay the teacher for being late to class. This was at the end of the school year. And then that funny E word kept coming out of my mouth. You know the one. Extortion. And yes, I used that word when speaking to the vice principal. So imagine my surprise when he retaliated by bringing my son into his office and reading him the riot act about reporting this to me. Then he demanded to know what teachers were doing this. So, my son told him exactly who took money from him and who didn't. This resulted in his Science teacher accosting him in the hallway, yelling at him for telling that she did that when she didn't. So, once again, my son had to be the adult in the room and carefully explained to her that he specifically said she did NOT do this.

Now, over at the grade school where my younger son attended, he was in the TAG program. That's the Talented and Gifted program. My older son was apparently one point off on the testing, probably due to the cold he had that day, and was being watched for future inclusion in the program. (I didn't know that until I spoke with the program director, because no one tells parents anything) So, he's in the fourth grade, being taught by a kindergarten teacher. Yes, that mattered. She was opposed to TAG, even though the entire class was taught the same lessons. The TAG kids were just given separate assignments. So it had stopped being a pull out program. But she felt it was intrusive and preferred to treat the fourth graders as 5 year olds. Note to anyone who hasn't spent time around gifted children: you don't do that.

So when I asked the boys if they'd like to homeschool, they jumped at the idea. My oldest was relieved. My youngest was thrilled because he didn't apparently like his chair at school. We didn't do this because we were mad at the government. We didn't do it because we wanted to have some fundamentalist religious curriculum. We just did it because I didn't think they received the education they COULD receive, or be treated with the respect they deserved. Because my boys were always the students teachers wanted to have. They were nice kids. So no one was happy at the school district when we did this. It was a statement on their worth in their view. I guess in some ways that's true. But I don't think as Ron Paul does that parents are failures for sending their kids to public school. Not everyone can do what we did. Or should. The boys had good teachers for the most part when they attended public school. We live in a small town though, so I'm sure that had something to do with that. Parents were involved in their kids' education. We just decided to try something different.

And it worked! The boys discovered interests and I was more of a facilitator than a teacher. We adopted mostly an unschooling approach, with some directed subjects that they would need to learn skills for college. Math was Saxon math. History was Zinn's, A People's History of the US along with Lies My Teacher Told Me. Okay, I'm a liberal hippie, and yes I disagree with Mitch Daniel's attempt to eradicate the world of the works of Howard Zinn. I re-took Writing 121 and the boys used that as their writing curriculum. We read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. They both became interested in computers and the oldest ended up graduating from college with a dual math/computer science degree and the youngest graduated with a degree in computer engineering and a full minor in computer science. They both work in their chosen fields. 

The best thing about homeschooling is that your children will have the chance to explore their interests and develop their natural love of learning. They will understand that learning is not something that is done TO them, but BY them. It's their responsibility to embrace education. And if nothing else, as long as they learn that, then it's a complete success. My oldest started taking classes at the community college when he was fifteen. The youngest began attending classes at sixteen. They could do that under high school concurrent enrollment. My oldest was the only one to do that, however. They both took their GED tests at sixteen and either worked in the case of my oldest, or began attending college full time. By the time both were seventeen, they were in college full time.

One last thing. My boys are martial artists. We ran a kenpo school and they trained with us. I had no qualms about their ability to defend themselves should it become necessary while at school. One problem. The school district didn't share my viewpoint. If either of them had been involved in any altercations, they would have been expelled and arrested. The martial arts part has nothing to do with that. It was just a policy of expel, arrest, and sort it out later. I didn't like that. Here we were, training kids to defend themselves and at the one place they would likely experience an attack, they couldn't use what they had learned. And I'm not just talking about my kids. I'm talking about all the kids we taught over the years. So you know, when I hear this ridiculous second amendment argument about needing to have assault weapons so that we preserve our freedom, I have to laugh. Or scream. How do you tell a child he or she cannot defend themselves? How can school policy not preserve the rights of the victim? What message to they really want to send here?

People homeschool for lots of reasons. Sometimes they do it for Ron Paul's reasons. But to me, there's a little brainwashing there. I view my kids as separate entities from me. They have their own views, their own needs. It wasn't about me. It was about giving them what they needed, standing back, and watching the magic happen.

I cherish those years my boys were home. I witnessed what most parents never get to see. I witnessed first hand how my children learned and processed the world around them. You miss that when they're at school. So believe me when I say, I am the luckiest mom ever. 

Stop taking children away from legal cannabis users

Evidently CPS workers don't understand the idea of legal cannabis users. So let me explain this to you.

States pass laws. Sometimes they involve cannabis. Get used to it. We've been lied to all this time about the safety and efficacy of this plant. Parents who use cannabis are not criminals, especially if they've been granted a legal way to use it such as for medicinal purposes. There's nothing here to protect a child from.

In the case of Washington state, they legalized cannabis for recreational purposes in addition to their existing medicinal cannabis law. The law protects parents from this type of harassment. Why would CPS in Washington state tell Billy Fisher that he shouldn't have custody of his daughter because he's a cannabis patient? Have they lost their minds? He wants custody to save her from an unsafe situation she's been in. Here's a guy who actually wants to take care of his child! He wants to protect her and give her the best life possible. He loves his little girl. And CPS wants to prevent him from doing so based on a lie.

Billy Fisher uses medicinal cannabis because of a degenerative disc condition. The state wants him to go into treatment and have two years of UA's during his follow up care for his so-called cannabis dependency.

Thanks for waiting..I had to scream for a bit.

Cannabis is NOT addictive. Those of us who use it medicinally or otherwise are not addicts. We're not drug traffickers. We're not criminals. We don't deserve to have our kids taken from us for using a safe plant to deal with our medical conditions. Because if we get to lose our kids for this, then so should anyone who drinks alcohol or uses prescription drugs. Especially in a state where it's legal recreationally.

There will be a rally hosted by Serra Frank from Moms for Marijuana International on the steps of the Spokane County Courthouse on October 3rd. It starts at 11am with a press conference beginning at 11:30. The link below gives details for anyone who can attend in support of Billy and his daughter.

We need to stop this travesty before it goes any further. #Peace4Patients

The Fight for Lilly Fisher

Life goes on..

It's interesting. Every time I either stand up for myself, or do what someone in authority tells me to do, I'm viewed as a bad person. It's as if as long as I'm doing everything that everyone else wants, then I'm a good person. If I say no to something, I'm not. How is that even possible? Or fair?

And the retaliation is awful. Because they always retaliate. My father (abuser) dies and as one of the beneficiaries, I'm given account numbers that my brother and I are beneficiaries on so that I can arrange for their disbursement. I did that. Then, wouldn't you know it, I received more account numbers from another bank. It's funny because I don't remember being told about them by my abuser's wife's family member who called me to give me the initial account numbers. I seem to remember getting the additional account numbers from my brother who found out when the bank sent him some paperwork on those accounts. Until then, he had no idea that they even existed. And according to my brother, my abuser's wife didn't appear happy that he knew about them. But I wasn't there, so I don't know if that was true or not. After all, he had a different relationship with him and was pretty upset about losing his father. But then he didn't do the things to my brother that he did to me. So I contacted that bank, did what they asked and the funds were disbursed to me and my brother. Now I'm the bad guy for doing so. And now my abuser's wife is sending me his medical bills to pay. 

What I'd like to know is where is his will? I'm fairly certain that he had one. Who gets his personal possessions? I don't want any of them, but I know my brother would like to have something. Why do women get involved with men later in life, believing only what they tell them about themselves? Did she ever wonder why I had no contact with him? She's a mother. Didn't she suspect? I would have.

Well, I'm not going to pay anything and she has no right to ask for this. I had no contact with him for good reason. I wasn't safe around him. He had an arsenal that he used to intimidate and threaten me and my mother with. And where is that arsenal now? It was worth a fortune. I asked my brother and he doesn't know. Again, I don't want the arsenal. I want nothing other than what I've already received. I had no idea I was receiving anything and I had no idea my name was on any accounts. I had no contact with him. I had no choice there. He terrified me. And on July 2, when he died, I was finally safe. Survivors understand this. I'm sorry my abuser's wife can't. Instead, she's angry at, and punishes, his victim. I don't get this. He should have gone to prison for what he did. And she wants to punish ME?

I don't wish ill on my abuser's wife. I don't know her. I've never met her. And although I know my abuser could talk his way into and out of anything including a marriage (he's been married a bunch of times), I want nothing to do with anyone who has made a conscious decision to have something to do with him. I can't trust people who do this. I don't know if his past wives were unaware of who and what he was, but I can't take that chance that they were. He destroyed my chance at a healthy life. 

And on July 2, 2013, after 55 terrifying years, I took that chance back. So there you have it.